


Catchment

by SLWalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Feral lives, Gen, They all deserved better, canon-divergent AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 10:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: Feral's not a warrior, he's a tinkerer and a thinker, but he still saves one brother.  (And, because he did, he might ultimately be able to save the one he never knew, too.)





	Catchment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlekmac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlekmac/gifts).



> Happy birthday, littlekmac. <3

When the witch came, Feral thought that was the end.

He had been training with his brother and the rest of their clan for his entire life, but he'd never taken to combat like Savage had. Where his older brother could wield nearly any weapon, Feral had to fight for every finger's breadth of skill, and even then, he could never seem to catch up. And honestly, mostly, that didn't bother him. He didn't _want_  to be a fighter.

What he liked to do -- what he _loved_ to do -- was to make things.

Even when he was little, he was putting together the toys Savage had carved for him; building villages and imagining cities that he had only ever heard rumors about. His entire life had been spent within the same area, thus far, and the idea of so many buildings and people crammed together stretched that imagination, but in a pleasant way. What Feral thought about was not the people, so much, but the _how_. How do they get water, if they don't have a river close by to carry it from? How do they get rid of waste, if they have no open space for pits to be dug? The remnants of old technology around their own village provided tantalizing hints, but the Sisters did not really want them to read or to learn. For Feral, it was all an exercise in working out the logistics in his mind, or drawing on their bark parchment with a charcoal stick, or in the dirt.

His finest triumph at that point was building a water system. It took him six attempts; his first tub leaked. His second didn't at first, but soon sprung several. As he refined each design, Savage would look at him baffled, wondering why, but supportive. He never failed to stroke the top of Feral's head as he was working, even if he tended to take a traditional and pragmatic view of things.

"Why are you doing this when the river is only ten minutes walk?" Savage had asked, because for him, it was no big thing to walk there and haul back water in buckets, on the bar balanced on his wiry, strong shoulders. In fact, Feral thought it was probably one of his brother's favorite parts of his morning routine.

It was not, however, Feral's favorite part of his _evening_ routine.

"Because I can," Feral had answered; he doubted that even if he made a successful rain catchment system, his brother would vary his routine. But he himself would like the convenience of a cup of water, drawn in their own home. Or to avoid walking to the river, if he could. "I just need to make it strong enough and water tight enough, I can figure out the rest."

Savage didn't get it, but he helped; he pointed Feral to some plants which seeped a substance that was waterproofed when rendered and dried. That was Feral's first success with creating a barrel that could hold water without leaking, but also maintain its strength.

Then the problem had been that it wasn't _enough_. They weren't suffering any drought, but the single barrel never filled enough to be useful. From there, Feral took to the roof of their shared home; he split larger, woody reeds and fixed them to the roof, perpendicular to the centerline and feeding into a huge version of the same that was horizontal. He spent hours, then days, then weeks, then _months_ notching out the big reed, then fixing the medium ones into the new rig and to the roof, then converting the smaller ones into pipes.

Two other clansmen were taken in that time. Every time, they gathered after; sat around fires and murmured and tried to pretend there was no dread in their collective hearts every time the Sisters came. Savage would train harder after. He would make Feral train harder, too. Weeks would pass to nothing but fatigue and soreness and bruises, but eventually, Feral would wiggle away to work on his projects.

Once he had come up with the catchment part, he had to figure out how to elevate the barrel; it became quickly apparent that there wasn't enough gravity to feed the system into the house -- more reeds, more crude gaskets -- and Savage helped with that too, following Feral's excited instructions to help build a platform. If he was relieved for the distraction from his omnipresent worry, he didn't say it; if he wasn't, though, then Feral didn't know Savage as well as he was sure he did.

By the time it was done, three years had passed. Three years of Feral -- then in his early manhood, thirteen to sixteen summers -- working to figure it out and make it. Now, aside maintenance, they had running, filtered water in their home, collected off of their own roof and moving through the layers of sand and rocks and charcoal before moving into the pipes. Turn the handle, it flowed slowly but clear and sweet. Savage had grinned broadly when it worked, even if he still went to the river every morning.

Feral planned on doing the whole village the same way, determined and excited, even if most of the other clansmen didn't understand it or seem to want to.

He had built four more systems -- painstaking work, but efficient now that he knew exactly what he was doing -- when a new Sister came.

Suddenly, Feral wasn't working on anything but staying alive. This one was different; she didn't just test their prowess. She _killed_  those who failed. Clansmen he had grown up around, dead on the ground, turned to inert meat. Her eyes, pale in her pale face, were granite and cold. Feral would not have survived, if not for Savage, stepping in to protect him and give him time to retreat before another clansman could come at her.

 _She's going to take my brother,_ he realized, at some point, his back to a stone column and his arm burning from a deep cut he'd gotten. He gasped desperately for air, eyes stinging and anger in his hearts and panic in his limbs. _She's going to take him away._

There was tell of the spirits that supposedly protected them. Feral had never given such talk much thought; he was raised with it, and Savage believed whole-heartedly, purely, in them, but Feral had mostly nodded along at the stories.

Yet--

They spoke to him now.

_Make him lose._

It wasn't a voice, exactly. More-- it was inserted into him, like an instinct implanted. He knew the truth of it instantly.

Savage never saw it coming. Feral wasn't aware he was crying, as he clubbed his brother in the skull hard enough to knock him unconscious. And then, as their numbers dwindled, he dropped to the ground -- bleeding and fighting to calm every breath -- and laid over his brother's body and feigned his own unconsciousness.

The Sister seemed disappointed, but it wasn't either of _them_ that she left with. Instead, it was Shard she took. She passed them by; apparently, she didn't care if she killed them, only that it didn't matter if they all lived or all died.

And even though Savage was bedridden for days after from the concussion Feral had given him, Feral knew Savage would forgive him.

The witch came, and it _wasn't_  all over.

 

 

 

Feral felt the presence coming before it arrived.

He didn't know if he believed in the Spirits before, but he listened _now._  They had saved his brother, he was sure, even if he didn't know what they had saved Savage from. And, of course, Savage had forgiven him; he was frustrated by the long recovery from his head injury, but Feral was downright grateful to go fetch the morning's water from the river, regardless of whether he needed to or not, until Savage could do it himself.

Now, Feral paid attention to those Spirit guided instincts, even as he built more rain catchments and slowly converted his clansmen into accepting the new technology, primitive as it was.

This presence felt dangerous. _Sharp_. The serrated edge of a metal blade, glowing red hot in the dark and boiling of a forge, a threat implied in smoke.

But also-- something else. Less sharp, under the smoke.

 _Lost._ Or _loss._

Or both.

Feral stood up on the peak of a roof and cast his gaze around, but it only took him a few moments to see. Walking down the road was another clansman, but one he didn't recognize. Behind him, Savage trailed with steps that looked confident, but that Feral could see were suffused with a kind of wariness. It was enough for Feral to tighten his grip around the handle of his mallet, ready to leap to Savage's defense whether he himself was a warrior or not.

But the strange clansman didn't make any move to attack. Instead, he paused in front of the house Feral was working on, tipping his head back to eye him. In the bright light, his skin was a rich red that Feral had not seen before; his markings black as coal, too.

But the thing that really stood out were his _horns_ ; Feral knew his brother's head better than his own. And aside a single additional one at his crown, this new clansman had the exact same pattern of horns that Savage did.

"Feral, this is Maul," Savage said, looking up at him there in something like apology, something like a plea. "Our-- our brother. Born between us, and lost, and now returned."

Maul flicked a glance at Savage, but despite everything about him seeming to be restrained, there was a strange uncertainty in that expression. Then he looked back up at Feral and gestured. "These water systems. They're your work?"

"They are," Feral said, tipping his chin up, proud of them and himself. Even if he could see the high technology that Maul had on his belt.

Maul nodded after a moment. "They're clever," he said, unadorned. It was plainspoken, but the sincerity rang through anyway; Feral could feel it. Then Maul gestured again. "Come, we have things to discuss."

Feral looked over his work; half done, it would be a couple days to finish assembly. Then he looked down at his brother -- his _brothers_  -- and nodded before clambering down from the roof, exchanging a look somewhere between hope and fear with Savage, as they turned around and headed for home to see what the discussion and, ultimately, the _future_ would hold.


End file.
